For the most part, we had a nice relaxing weekend to finish up our activity-filled week.

Saturday morning was NT's basketball game. The team did much better this week and NT made the first basket of the game with Auntie Em and Craig there as witness!

After the game, Lizzy and I went to the co-op while NT and John went to the fish store to find out how to fix the cloudy water in the new tank. NT also traded in the two common platys he inherited because he didn't want them to have their live babies in his tank, knowing that the baby fish would eaten right away. They learned all kinds of things about how to care for the fish and the tank.

Saturday evening John and Liz made everyone's current favorite dinner on NT's menu--German oven pancakes with sour cream and strawberries.

Sunday morning we all pitched in to clean the house. In the afternoon it was football mania with back-to-back playoff games. John made homemade popcorn for a snack and then sloppy joes for dinner. I contributed homemade apple crisp for the half-time dessert during the Vikings game.

All weekend the kids played with the Magna Tiles, read books, and made up all kinds of their own physical activity "challenges" in the house since it was wet and sloppy outside.

Today NT was up to watch PBS's Cyberchase on refining and optimizing inventions. Then the kids brought up some huge sheets of scrap wood from the basement to play with (Magna Tiles and cars were involved, of course).

Lizzy had ballet and NT and I worked on some new math flashcards I picked up for him. He didn't love them, but I was impressed by how much he knew or was able to figure out...like how to add 53 + 25 without a piece of paper and pencil (or a calculator) and how to solve for "x" in a simple equation.

This afternoon the kids shoveled snow and played together until it was time for NT's cooking class where they made homemade pretzels. Then Liz helped me make dinner--biscuits and sausage with gravy--which NT gave only 2 stars. During dinner NT and I had a conversation about how he doesn't like jazz (always my dinner music of choice) because it's too slow and there's no singing (at least on the CD that's currently in the player...).